It’s been used to buy one car company, give another to union allies, punish non-union workers, undermine the bankruptcy code, enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, keep unionized Zombie firms from dying, and generally terrorize the world economy. Now the left in Congress wants to use it again, this time as a slush fund for a third round of stimulus funding. The AP reports: Democrats are looking to tap as much as $70 billion in unused funds from the Wall Street bailout to pay for new spending …
Medal of Honor winner and World War II veteran Colonel Van Barfoot just wants to be able to give the American flag the respect it deserves. His homeowners association thinks otherwise and ordered the 90-year-old Virginia man to tear down his flag pole because it is not “aesthetically appropriate,” WTVR CBS 6 in Richmond, VA, reports.
The Senate began debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R.3590) this week. Senators on both sides of the aisle offered amendments to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s huge, 2074 page health care bill. The first votes to take place concerned preventative services for women. As Senators weigh in on this vital topic, Americans have yet another opportunity to examine their actions rather than just their promises and talking points. Bureaucratic Control over Health Benefits. This week, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) offered an amendment that would extend the …
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to permanently extend the death tax at its current 45 percent rate and $3.5 million exemption. This is a significant tax hike since the death tax was supposed to expire on January 1, 2010. The increase of the death tax is a major blow to the badly weakened economy since the tax is a huge drag on economic activity. It is also a major disappointment for countless family-owned businesses slammed hard by this unfair tax. Despite passage in the House, the death tax increase …
Federal stimulus spending is stimulating business for contractors helping the government figure out how to spend the stimulus money, reports the Washington Post. Government agencies say they can’t properly oversee the $789 billion stimulus package without hiring outside help. As a result, the region around the nation’s capital is doing just fine. Reports the Post: Of the stimulus grants and contracts awarded so far, the District has received nearly 10 times as much per capita as the national average, and Maryland has received more per capita than much harder-hit states, …
In January 2008, the United States economy employed 138.1 million people and the unemployment rate stood at 4.9%. But the powers in Washington thought deficit spending could boost a slowing economy, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) passed and President George Bush signed a $168 billion economic stimulus bill made up of temporary tax cuts and increased mortgage grantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By January 2009 that economic stimulus worked so well that the U.S. economy had lost 3.5 million jobs and the unemployment rate stood at 7.6%. Again …
Remember the Obama campaign? President Barack Obama’s victory was built, at least in part, on the hopes and dreams of eager young adults and bright-eyed, liberal college students who donned t-shirts emblazoned with the symbol of their champion, knocked on doors and made phone calls, all in the belief that the youthful senator from Illinois would bring about hope, change and a new dawn in America. Guess what? Change is coming. Obamacare, embodied in two giant telephone book-sized congressional bills, chock full of all sorts of complex new rules and …
The Washington Post reports: The House approved Thursday a measure making the current estate tax rate permanent, overcoming the objections of an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative critics. The bill passed, 225 to 200, with 26 Democrats joining all Republicans present to vote no. It would make permanent the current estate tax rate of 45 percent, with an exemption of $3.5 million per individual. If Congress does not act, the estate tax would disappear altogether in 2010, then return in 2011 under the higher rates — 55 percent and …
Today, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) voiced his concern that the Senate is moving away the Founders’ vision. No, Senator Reid has not admitted the unconstitutionality of his health care legislation. Rather, in his floor remarks, Senator Reid asserted that the Founders never envisioned the Senate to be a forum for endless debate on legislation: “Because it couldn’t be any further from what the founders had in mind. They didn’t write this esteemed body’s rules so that we could stare at the hands of the clock, which are right up here, …
Even as debate and votes are launched this week on health care reform bills that will hurt “our capacity to innovate” and “develop new therapies”, the Obama Administration moved yesterday to make federal funds available for controversial experimentation that has thus far failed to generate any human therapies. Taxpayer money will now flow to support research using cell lines derived from the destruction of human embryos. The National Institutes of Health approved the first 13 stem cell lines on Wednesday, and several dozen more of these lines are nearing approval …
